Posts Tagged ‘Playdom’

Disney Interactive Studios has just shutdown Propaganda Games, its Vancouver-based console game development studio, employing around 70 people. The move is clearly in response to dismal performance of console based games in general and the ones being developed by Propaganda studio in particular. Propaganda’s latest project was Tron: Evolution, a console game that serves as a prequel to the movie “Tron: Legacy” and the graphic novel “Tron: Betrayal”. Tron failed to be a business success and its sales remained weak. According to NPD Group, Disney has sold only 190,755 copies.

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Yahoo! vice president and head of media James Pitaro (pictured) is going to Disney World, joining Disney Interactive Media Group as co-president, along with John Pleasants, who will also continue as CEO of Playdom, a social-gaming company acquired by Disney earlier this year.

Pitaro will oversee the Disney Online group of Disney-branded Web sites and social-media outlets, while Pleasants will lead the media giant’s digital games businesses.

While at Yahoo!, Pitaro had been involved in expanding original video, branded entertainment, editorial content, and the use of data to enhance the consumer Web experience. He led the expansion of Yahoo! Sports prior to being elevated to head of Yahoo! Media. Prior to Yahoo!, he served as head of business affairs for online music site Launch Media and practiced law at several New York firms.

At Disney, Pitaro will be responsible for enhancing the consumer experience on Disney-branded Web and social-media sites, including Disney.com and Family.com, and he will oversee Disney’s social-media marketing agency, DigiSynd.

Pitaro and Pleasants are succeeding former DIMG president Steve Wadsworth.

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As we suspected a few days ago in our 3 Reasons That Disney Would Buy Playdom article, Disney has announced plans to acquire Playdom.  The financials have been disclosed and at $563.2 million plus a $200 million earnout, the deal is larger than the approximately $400 million dollar deal that EA made to buy Playfish.  As we reported, the match is good, based on Playdom’s existing properties and Disney’s IP.  Once again, social gaming explodes to a whole new level… When will the growth stop?

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Reports are flying in this week that Disney is in late stage talks to buy Playdom for $600 million.  The rumors are strongly confirmed by TechCrunch sources and seem to have some weight.  What would Disney have to gain by acquiring a company like Playdom?  A lot.  Playdom touches 40,000,000 MAUs and produces great games like Wild Ones.  The company has strong management in its ex-EA CEO John Pleasants and CFO Christa Quarles.  I take a look at some of the reasons they would be interested.

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In a great first talk of the ‘social’ track of Casual Connect, out at the Triple Door club across from the Benaroya Hall, Playdom CEO John Pleasants discussed the steps that are necessary to help social games continue their growth.  In addiition to demonstrating some of the growth trends of popular Playdom games, he also made a few observations about how the industry can continue it’s growth from about $1 to $2 Billion to $2-$4 Billion in the coming years.  Take a look at the video below.

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Supercharged from its latest round of funding, Playdom has just announced the acquisition of social game developer Hive7. This marks the 8th publicized investment for Playdom as it vies for market share against the kingpin Zynga. Hive7 was found in 2005 and has made titles such as Youtopia, Kick-Off, Sindicate and its premier game called Knighthood. The Palo-Alto based company has already joined Playdom’s offices although the terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

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A recent report by Lou Kerner analyzing Facebook traffic across all the major social game publishers’ games shows that almost every social games company experienced losses in traffic for the month of May… all except Playdom. The catalyst for the loss of users was undoubtedly Facebook’s decisions to turn off two key viral Facebook features: notifications and requests. Are we about to see a shake up in the leadership of social gaming, and will Playdom begin to encroach on Zynga’s turf?
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Playdom has been restless and extremely active in the social gaming arena announcing special partnerships and acquisitions at a higher frequency then any other player in the space. Adding to their palette is the latest acquisition of the casual and MMORPG game publisher Acclaim Games. Playdom’s continued shopping spree indicates the importance of using funds wisely and quickly as companies vie for top talent and technologies in the rugged social gaming landscape.

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The sports-media powerhouse ESPN has announced a deal with social game publisher Playdom to develop branded sports games for the web and major social networks like Facebook and MySpace. These games are set to launch in Fall of 2010 and we expect branded sports entertainment and gaming to become more prevalent especially as other strong players like EA look to fill the void in the sports genre. Read more after the jump.

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At the Engagement Lessons from Leaders panel at last week’s Social Gaming Summit, moderator Jeremy Liew asked Christa Quarles to discuss the importance of storytelling in their Social City hit game. Christa discussed many key factors that Playdom designers think about when creating games, and told the audience an interesting fact about how Social City integrated story into a water tower item and how story boosted revenue with virtual sportscars. See the video below.
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